#FamiliesBelongTogether: Oppose Inhumane Immigration Policy

Nov 20, 2018

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Quick Action

While more than 100 children have yet to be reunited with their parents, Trump is radically changing asylum rules, moving thousands of unaccompanied children into internment camps, and deporting the family members who come to claim them. Keep the pressure on your MoC to demand investigations and oversight, block Trump’s nominee to lead ICE, and give to the organizations providing direct legal support.

Image by Michele Stapleton from the June 30 Families Belong Together Rally in Portland

RECENT UPDATES

ICE’s acting director, Ron Vitiello, has been tapped by Trump to be the agency’s permanent director. He now faces an imminent confirmation vote in the Senate. Vitiello has overseen the targeting of undocumented immigrants who have no criminal record beyond crossing the border illegally, including parents of American citizens. In his confirmation hearings, Vitiello did not rule out renewing family separation, and indicated the policy was an effective deterrent. In 2015, he tweeted from his personal account that the Democratic Party should be renamed the “Liberalcratic party or the NeoKlanist party.”

Immediately following the midterm election, Trump announced sweeping new changes to asylum rules, prohibiting anyone crossing between ports of entry from applying. The new policy forces asylum seekers to choose between having to wait for weeks or longer at overloaded ports of entry and risking immediate deportation by crossing illegally and turning themselves in to Border Patrol. The policy and the judge issued a temporary restraining order to halt the policy before it is heard again in December. has already been challenged in court by the ACLU – the judge issued a temporary restraining order to halt the policy before it is heard again in December.

Hundreds of unaccompanied children continue to be quietly moved under cover of darkness and without warning from shelters around the country to an internment camp in Tornillo, TX in late September. The “tent city” is unregulated, and the children are not provided schooling or regular access to legal services. More than 1,600 have already been moved there, and the camp was recently expanded to hold a total of 3,800 children. The total number of unaccompanied immigrant children in federal custody is now more than 14,000. To make matters worse, the Dept. of Health and Human Services recently began allowing ICE to check the immigration status of adults who come to take custody of children, and deporting any they find to be undocumented. Sen. Kamala Harris has introduced the Families, Not Facilities Act that would end the practice (it’s also listed among the “bills to support” below).

As many feared, the Trump administration announced its plans to withdraw from the Flores Settlement, the court agreement that sets rules for the treatment of children in federal custody. Withdrawing will enable the government to indefinitely detain immigrant families and unaccompanied children in unlicensed internment camps, including those being planned on military bases. Once it removes the regulations that limit the amount of time families can be held in detention, the Trump administration is prepared to implement a new family separation policy, this time offered to parents as a “binary choice” between separation and long-term family detention in internment camps.

A recent story by The New Yorker showed that some amount of family separation has continued even after the policy was ordered to end, and children as young as five are being forced to sign away their rights before being lost in the shelter system for months. A recent AP investigation also showed that some separated children whose parents were deported without them are being adopted by American families without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

A new report by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General confirms that the Trump administration’s Zero Tolerance Policy was purposefully intended to separate children from their parents. It also shows widespread and continuing dysfunction and chaos as a result of the policy’s implementation and the resulting court ordered reunification. Among the findings: hundreds of children were held in chain-link pens without beds beyond the maximum 72 hours allowed by law, the government did not maintain any kind of database of the children it separated or even provide identifying information like ID bracelets to babies and toddlers. It also found that Customs and Border Patrol purposefully restricted the flow of asylum seekers at legal points of entry.

ACTION: Contact Your Reps!

Tell them that they should use all legislative tools to…

Reunite ALL Separated Families Immediately. It is the Government’s responsibility to locate and reunite the families it separated. Congress should pressure the administration to provide a complete accounting of ALL separated families, not just those separated since the zero tolerance policy was put in place, and allocating all necessary resources to locating separated parents and reuniting them with their children.

Oppose Ronald Vitiello, Trump’s Nominee to Lead ICE. Vitiello is ICE’s acting director. In his confirmation hearings, Vitiello did not rule out renewing family separation, and indicated the policy was an effective deterrent. In 2015, he tweeted from his personal account that the Democratic Party should be renamed the “Liberalcratic party or the NeoKlanist party.”

Oppose New Funding for Family Separation, Long-Term Detention, and Non-Criminal Deportation. Our agencies should use the funds available to them to implement humane immigration policies that are effective and fiscally responsible, prioritizing criminal prosecution and deportation of violent criminals and human/drug/weapons traffickers.

Reinstate Detention Alternatives and Access to Counsel. Family prisons endanger children’s health and safety and cost millions of dollars to maintain. Congress should reinstitute the cost-effective Family Case Management Program which allowed families to be freed with supervision and ensured 100% of families attended their hearings in court. Expanding access to counsel helps families navigate confusing court proceedings and helps reduce the number of families who do not attend their hearings.

Reverse Recent Changes to Asylum Rules and Retain Flores Settlement: No reform should weaken the current asylum laws in the United States, weaken protections for unaccompanied immigrant children, expand immigration detention, limit due process or otherwise make it more difficult for families to establish they have a valid claim for protection. Furthermore, no reform should weaken or undermine the current protections for children established in the Flores settlement.

Call for the Resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Despite warnings of the crisis that would result by enacting the zero tolerance policy, Secretary Nielsen allowed the agencies under her direction to proceed with a plan that purposefully caused trauma to children in order to deter immigration, did not make any effort to track or reunite separated family members until a court ordered her to do so, and failed to provide accountability for her agency’s inability to reunite families, respond to cases of child abuse, and ensure asylum seekers are afforded constitutional protections. In addition, Secretary Nielsen repeatedly lied to Congress, and continues to promote policies that separate families, including the elimination of Temporary Protected Status for the working parents of American children.

ACTION: DONATE!

Project Reunify – An effort spearheaded by the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, a non-profit legal services organization that represents all detained immigrant children in the United States through the Flores v. Sessions class action case. Under the settlement, CHRCL is the only non-governmental organization in the country permitted to inspect every detention site where children are held and to interview and assess the treatment of all detained children. CHRCL’s project will locate separated immigrant children, conduct legal & mental health interviews, reunite them with their parents, and prevent unlawful deportation without hearings.

Flights for Families – A Families Belong Together fundraising effort to raise money to fund travel costs, from flights to hotels and necessary personal items like soap and toothbrushes. Every cent will go to these travel costs for families, to support volunteers who are traveling with them for safety, or to commissary accounts that allow families who are still separated to call each other. If there is anything left after all of that, it will be donated to the Families Belong Together Fund to be distributed more widely to immigrants in need at the border.

FAMILY SEPARATION Q & A

What is the Trump administration’s policy for immigrants crossing the Southwest Border?

The Trump administration officially announced its new “zero tolerance” policy in early May, after testing it out in El Paso in the summer of 2017. All immigrant adults who cross the Southwest border between ports of entry without legal documentation are arrested and prosecuted for illegal entry, punishable by up to 6 months imprisonment on a first offense, followed by deportation. Contrary to Trump’s tweets, this policy is by his design, it is not a law or a “loophole”.

Does the law require the Trump administration to separate immigrant children from parents?

No. Prior to Trump’s zero tolerance policy, families were processed through immigration or civil courts, rather than criminal courts. Criminal proceedings were used for repeat offenders, violent criminals, or human/drug traffickers. When the Trump administration chose to prosecute parents traveling with children as criminals rather than asylum seekers, it also made the decision to separate those children from their parents, since children cannot be detained for more than 20 days and cannot be detained in restrictive, jail-like settings that are not certified for children. Before Trump’s zero tolerance policy, immigrant families who passed their “credible fear” asylum hearing were released on immigration parole or bond, or were placed in the Family Case Management Program, but still were required to meet legal obligations that included showing up for court hearings and leaving the country if their asylum petition was denied.

Are there alternatives to family separation that comply with immigration laws?

Yes. The Trump administration is very familiar with effective alternatives, because it helped dismantle them last year as they were preparing to implement the zero-tolerance policy. The highly effective Family Case Management Program allowed families to be placed into a program, together, that connected them with a case manager and legal orientation that ensured they understood how to apply for asylum and attend immigration court proceedings. The program had a 99.6% appearance rate at immigration court hearings for those enrolled in the program. It’s not only a more humane alternative to family prisons, but it’s also fiscally responsible — just $36 per day per family, compared to $319 per day per person for family detention.

Maine House:1-800-423-2900

Maine Senate:1-800-423-6900

Suit Up Maine is a statewide, all-volunteer, progressive, grassroots group of more than 5,400 Mainers that seeks to create and foster a more informed and engaged electorate. We raise awareness of and advocate for policies and legislation that promote equity and equality in civil rights, social justice, health care, the environment, education, the economy, and other areas that affect the lives of all people. We are beholden to issues and action, not parties or politicians, and we aren’t engaged in fundraising. Suit Up Maine fosters collaboration among our state’s progressive groups and organizations to collectively connect, educate, and motivate Mainers to rise in non-violent resistance to a regressive agenda.